A majestic nine-metre work by the late, revered Gija artist Freddie Timms (Ngarrmaliny), one of the founders of the Jirrawun Arts movement, has travelled from Arnold Bloch Leibler’s Melbourne office to the Art Gallery of New South Wales for Freddie Timms and Timmy Timms: Major, the East Kimberley bushranger.
ABL has loaned the six-panel Blackfella Creek (2002) for the exhibition, which will be presented in conjunction with Nolan: Origins. Its inclusion brings together two artists who used the figure of the bushranger to approach Australian history from profoundly different perspectives.
Major was a Wagiman man remembered through Gija oral history for his resistance to colonial violence in the East Kimberley. Timms grew up hearing accounts of Major from his grandmother and, after encountering Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly paintings, developed his own series around the figure in the late 1990s.
Blackfella Creek emerged from a significant period in Timms’ practice. This monumental piece first featured in the seminal Jirrawun exhibition Blood on the Spinifex at the Ian Potter Museum in 2002.
Rather than treating landscape and history as separate subjects, Timms’ aerial, map-like compositions record the ways Country carries lived experience, including the effects of pastoralism, development, displacement and colonial violence.
The present exhibition also foregrounds the relationship between Freddie Timms and his uncle Timmy Timms, a very important Gija lawman and head stockman who helped bring him up.
When Jirrawun commenced in 1998, Freddie was elected its inaugural chairman under his uncle’s guidance. Jirrawun was a trail blazing organisation that ABL helped establish through a collaboration between Peter Seidel, head of the firm’s native title and Indigenous rights practice, Tony Oliver, Jirawun’s Artistic Director, Freddie, Paddy Bedford, Peggy Patrick and other celebrated Gija artists, to give them greater cultural and commercial agency and empowerment over the production and presentation of their work.
“Lending Blackfella Creek allows it to be encountered in the context of Freddie’s broader practice and the histories it carries of the killing times, as the Gija say. Its presentation alongside Nolan’s work creates an opportunity to consider how different stories of resistance enter Australia’s cultural memory through the inspired genius of such masterful artists.” said Peter Seidel, head of the firm’s native title and Indigenous rights practice.
A timelapse video released by ABL follows the work’s careful deinstallation in Melbourne and installation at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Further information about the exhibition is available from the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
